Marta Halina

"For as long as we have tried to grasp the mysteries of human consciousness, we have tried to understand nonhuman consciousness". ~ Marta Halina

Marta Halina is Cambridge Professor in Philosophy of Cognitive Science, and currently Project Director at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence. Her research currently focuses on the nature of cognition in great apes and other nonhuman animals.

Recently, she has investigated the hand gestures of chimpanzees and bonobos to ask whether they prove apes' awareness of other minds; she has also pointed to the octopus as an almost extra-terrestrial example of an intelligent life utterly different to homo sapiens.